Slackers
by Yuuki F
Summary: An experimental piece regarding the wandering existential thoughts of a bunch of slackers.


This is definitely an experimental one. I saw the movie "Slacker" and wondered how it would do as a written Touhou-esque kind of thing. So, if the narrative style seems to keep splitting off from one person to another: that's supposed to happen.

Also, to set the correct mood, I suggest this youtube playlist: watch?v=yvO62Jy6ME8&amp;list=PLFD0EE351AB3C8511

* * *

Suika was on Reimu's porch. It was probably some time around noon. She wasn't too certain herself. She had woken up early, as part of an ongoing insomnia of sorts. Early enough that she saw the sunrise, at least. And that expanse of time until then, it was nothing. It was almost like she was still dreaming even though she was awake, and every conscious memory was in fact still a liminal and fleeting one. In short, she had spaced out for the course of several hours, staring off at the side of a mountain that she looked at every day. A landscape that seemed to provide her with infinite philosophical wonder even though she was not able to consciously express them.

"Hey."

Suika stopped swinging her feet over the porch for a moment as she turned around, "Oh, hey Reimu."

Reimu was adjusting her sleeves, "How many slugs have you taken today?"

Suika paused before realizing she was referring to how much she had drank today. She held up the bottle, as if it would help in her estimation, "Low 50's? Maybe?"

"Oh, wow, It's still before noon then?"

Suika laughed, "Yeah, you got up early."

As Suika took another swig, Reimu placed her palm beside her face, "Let me have one, will you?"

Suika passed the gourd to Reimu as she took a drink before passing it back.

"Where are you going today?"

Reimu shrugged, "I don't know, I just want to fly around."

"Feel like you're alive or something?"

"Yeah, I guess, something like that. It's just...you know that feeling you get when you're so engrossed in the day-to-day that you forget the idea that you're alive? Like you know that, and it's in the back of your mind and what-not. But it doesn't really hit you until you start to notice it."

Reimu stared at her hands, "And it gets to the point where you starting looking at your hands, and noticing that you can feel and that you can think any thought you want, and this wash of 'How could I forget that?' comes over you. Only, I guess, you don't really forget it, but it feels like you have. Like you've been on autopilot and then suddenly you're knocked back into things, you know? A realization of your own living."

Suika took another swig. She gave no response to Reimu as she stared off into the mountains in the distance.

Reimu shrugged and took off in to the sky.

Within short order she did what she had planned to do. She felt the wind in her hair and the rising and falling rollercoaster associations that came with flying, but it wasn't as exciting. It was an activity that she was already well acquainted with, and her renoticing the faculties involved in moving about whilst flying only served more as reminders of past memories than a reminder to her present consciousness.

She started flying upside-down, as if she were in a lazy backstroke position she might have taken while in a pool.

"Where should I go now?"

She found herself surprised that she was already thinking that, given what her purpose in coming up here was. At the same time, the growing feelings of boredom that fell upon her appeared to be exactly what she was going for. It was only amidst her slow, gradual process of waking that she came to her sondering and her re-realization of her own consciousness.

She thought, _It's almost as if, boredom is actually a reminder that we really exist at all._

She brought a hand up to examine it, slowly tracing over the lines on her palms and the smoothness of her youthful hands on the back and she turned her wrist over and over again.

_Which is kind of a scary assertion. What if our abhorrence to boredom is coincident with our abhorrence to the realization of our own consciousness?_

She paused, _I'm going to start sounding like one of those Buddhists at this rate._

A hole opened up beside her, and soon after an arm lazily hung itself over its edge.

"Yukari?"

A mumbling echoed from the hole suspending itself in the air beside Reimu, "Yes?"

Reimu waited, herself still lazily floating in the sky. She hoped for Yukari to make some sort of explanation. Finally, she asked first, "You alright?"

She mumbled again, "Yeah."

"Just checking."

"'Kay."

Reimu turned her head up, staring at the clouds, letting herself and her mind drift off. Yukari's interruption having made her forget her previous train of thought.

With only her arm on the other side of the hole that was next to Reimu, Yukari continued in a voice reminiscent of someone having trouble waking up, "That dream again."

"The one where you're a raging lesbian?"

Yukari went silent for a moment, as if she were contemplating it, "...I'm dreaming right now?"

Reimu cringed as her attempt at a witty retort backfired on her, "Nevermind, the Mary one?"

"Yeah."

She brought her arm up a bit, as a tiny attempt at speaking like an Italian, "It's like, I really do feel like I'm her and it's like, it doesn't even feel at all connected with me. As if it's a completely alternate universe as opposed to a parallel universe. Like Zhuangzhi's butterfly I wake up nearly every morning wondering whether I'm the dream or she's the dream, or if the whole concept of dream doesn't even make sense."

"Maybe it's consciousness that doesn't even make sense."

It was still a little too early for Yukari to parse that one, "Huh?"

"Nothing. I'm going over to the Myouren Temple or do something about Suika. One of the two, are you going to wake up?"

Yukari waved her hand in a shooing motion, "Nah, I think Suika is probably starting to get sick of me hanging around you, have fun."

Reimu sped off, leaving Yukari's arm dangling in the air alone. Yukari soon enough brought her arm back in to her bed and closed the hole behind her. She was just lying on the floor looking up at the ceiling. She was definitely not a morning person and these moments more than anything seemed to be showing it. Moreover, she couldn't get that dream out of her head. Mary's life was, well, certainly romantic, and the feelings she had felt still stuck with her so very strongly that she couldn't help but pass over the dream over and over again, leaving herself and her body in a almost permanent state of waking-up-but-not-quite-yet-awake until some time in the afternoon. Eventually, she reached a state where she had slept and half-slept so much that she was so awake that trying to sleep any longer felt uncomfortable.

She hated the feeling of forced insomnia. So much so that she actually got up. She went ahead and dressed herself, seeing as how Ran was likely busy getting or cooking dinner by now. Chen, she was uncertain, was probably playing off in the forest somewhere. As she passed her head through her dress, and flipped her hair out from underneath it, she took a deep breath, as if to take in the air of a rarely empty house.

It made her want to survey it, and so she slothfully dragged her feet around the house. All of the creaks and moans were caused by her own movements, and as she walked about, the rays of a setting Sun shot their ways deep in to the house, causing the reflections of pieces of lint to dance in the air. Without much thought, Yukari found herself in a corridor, staring at the lint in a sunbeam as it fluttered about with its distinct pattern of Brownian motion. She tried to hold in her memory the path it made: the dance it made. But as she looked at it more and more, she noticed more and more details. Each one its own dance, and each one more complex and harder to hold in her mind than the previous.

_Thousands of years old, yet ne'er held in the speck of a mote of dust_, she mused to herself, trying to make light poetry of the situation.

Soon she found herself simply staring at it instead of trying to analyze it, and there upon faced the paradox she knew every time a similar exercise happened across her person: she understood it better. The items that can be understood best with unconscious thought seemed to only become more complex under analysis, and the items that can be understood best with analysis seemed to be impenetrable with the fluttering meanderings of the unconscious.

She involuntarily took a deep breath, breaking her out of her dust-mote-staring trance. Instead, she found herself thinking back upon that morning, where she had tried to force sleep again until almost the point of insomnia. Was it merely for the sake of a dream? Maybe. In any case, the psychological issues of insomnia disturbed her. Enough that she wished to muse upon it with someone else.

She went to the kitchen and shuffled around for a bottle of wine. How Ran managed to sustain the resources to support her own habits were unknown to her, but she nevertheless appreciated it. After grabbing the bottle, she slipped through a hole to Yuyuko's domain.

Yukari waved the wine bottle as she passed through the boundary, "Oi."

Yuyuko brought her head up from the table as she looked over to Yukari, "Oh, welcome."

She looked back to the garden as she brought her head down to lay on her arms, "The cups are in the usual spot."

Yukari went over to the kitchen, grabbing two cups in one hand to balance out the wine bottle in her other hand, "Youmu?"

"I don't know."

"Is she on leave?"

Yuyuko shrugged, "If she wants to, she's become more independent lately."

Yukari laid out the cups, popped off the cork, and poured out some wine, "Aw, starting to get lonely?"

Yuyuko appeared as if her head shrunk in to her arms further.

Yukari placed the bottle on the table and sat down opposite to Yuyuko, "Bullseye, huh?"

Yuyuko sighed, "Yeah, I guess so. I suppose you felt the same with Ran."

Yukari nodded, "In a sense."

They both collected their thoughts, staring out in to the garden.

"Hey," Yukari blurted, "Why are we still here?"

Yuyuko spun her head around to look at Yukari, "How do you mean?"

She picked up one of the cups of wine, "I found myself trying to sleep through today."

"Depressed?"

"I think some people would say that, but I wouldn't. I just feel...tired, you know?"

"Not physically tired."

"Right, otherwise I would have gone to sleep."

"And when you're 'mentally tired', do you think you should go to 'sleep'?"

Yukari cradled the cup in both of her hands, staring out in to the garden, giving no response.

Yuyuko pulled herself up, "Insomnia is a terrible affliction. One of the worst. But not the kind where we are merely physically tired and can not go to sleep, that is the better kind of insomnia. The insufferable kind is when you want to go sleep and-"

Yukari held up a hand, "Stop right there."

Yuyuko stopped midsentence as Yukari took another sip before finishing her thought, "Just wanting to go to sleep is a terrible affliction. A night where you go to sleep with anxieties, or with physical exhaustion, or when you go to sleep even though you do not want to, those are the evidences of a day done right. A day which ends with going to sleep out of boredom are evidences of days done wrong. It's as if there's nothing left to be done."

She took another sip.

Youmu walked past the living room with a broken rake, and upon seeing Yukari she took a deep bow.

Yuyuko perked up, "Oh, Youmu, you're here."

Youmu blinked, "Yes, I was here all day, I've been re-raking the Zen gardens. But as you can see," she held up the rake, "The rake is broken, so I am taking it into town."

Yukari continued staring off, letting Yuyuko do the talking, "Ah, will you be back later tonight?"

Youmu nodded, "Yes, well..."

She waved to the pair, "I'll see you, and you too, Lady Yukari."

Yuyuko smiled and waved back, while Yukari gave a small, stifling wave.

Youmu quickly picked up her pace to the door. In fact, she had been avoiding Yuyuko the entire day. She rubbed her forehead as she opened and closed the gate behind her, still feeling apprehensive to thinking about yesterday. She continued to muse back upon it as she walked through the setting Sun to the human village.

Marisa had tricked her. Well, no, she did apology immediately. Youmu went to Marisa's to pick up some mushrooms, and she accidentally gave Youmu the wrong kind: hallucinogens. Marisa took care of her while she was under the influence and apologized profusely afterwards, but what Youmu did not want to say was...she liked them. The experience she had was absolutely amazing, and the entire day she could do nothing but keep thinking back over it, and what she ended up talking to Marisa about afterwards. She didn't quite know, but she expected that it interfered, intersected, or something with her ghost half. As in she could not only vividly see what details had become mundane before in both worlds, but she felt like she was able to use her intersections at the boundary like some sort of (as cheesy as it sounds) 3D glasses. Each shade placed over each other to finally let her realize an ability that she always had: a sort of depth perception on the function on life itself.

And she couldn't help but see it everywhere she walked now. She didn't know if she was still high, if the drugs lingered on the part of a slower metabolism from her necrotic self, but everywhere she walked and everything she saw felt like it would be forever changed.

The town was just in front of her, and she saw it. The shadows of the people in the distance were no longer viewed by some sort of chi life force by her ghost half and some faint, blurry image in the distance by her eyes. Now the two were entangled, and she couldn't help but notice how much 'soul' each person had, and what their weight was in the world. And instead of arrogance that one must assume would come with such omniscience, it paralyzed her with uncertainty. Because now she felt that she saw in to a great mirror of truth, and it had told how inconsequential her actions were, and she felt mired with a sense of wondering where her discipline before came from.

At the very least, she came to understand Marisa's lackadaisical tendencies, and to a certain extent came to understand them as really, truly why she was more able than Youmu.

She felt a tap on her shoulder, and spun around, it was Keine.

"Youmu?"

She just stared for a moment, before snapping to attention, "Oh! Keine, I-"

In the embarrassment over having her image of a stance of constant vigilance come slamming down, she ended up bowing to Keine.

Keine laughed, "Are you alright? You were walking through town kind of out of it."

Youmu looked around, she indeed had walked clear through the entire town past Keine's house without even noticing it. And now she stared over the houses in the village. The visions were as apparent as they were before...

Youmu sighed, "Yeah...well, no. I mean, yes."

Keine replied, "Thinking about something?"

Youmu nodded, took a deep breath to collect her thoughts, and replied, "Yes, have you ever wondered why we matter? We have these souls, and we can see the great ability that each of us has, but put together, it seems to make some sort of paradox. It just makes you feel," she sighed again, "Insignificant."

Keine blinked. For one, the kids she taught never asked questions like that. And secondly, this was a rather sudden and somewhat 'deep' topic.

She drew an imaginary rectangle in the air, "Imagine we were putting together a jigsaw puzzle."

She started pushing imaginary jigsaw pieces in to the puzzle, "And we put in almost every piece."

Now she pointed at a spot in the air that made Keine point at Youmu directly between the eyes, "But there was one piece missing."

Keine finished her story by stretching out her arm to poke Youmu gently inbetween the eyes, "It just wouldn't be complete, no matter how small the jigsaw piece was."

Youmu blinked, "That was the corniest thing I've ever heard."

Keine shrugged, "I work with children."

Youmu looked down, shyly and embarrassed, "But thanks."

Keine pointed off in to the distance, "There's a hardware store over there though."

Youmu looked off, "Oh."

"I have to go, see you!"

And with that, Keine sprinted off, she was excited to go see Mokou. It was somewhat deep in to the bamboo forest, and she knew that she should take her time, tread more carefully as it were, show an air of a dignified older lady or some such thing, etc., etc.. She didn't care. She was excited to go see Mokou and she hated the feelings of anxiety that came from the pains of needing to be patient simply in trying to get from one place to another. And at what point had it gotten this way, at what point had she...

Lost in thought, she ended up bumping into Mokou on the path.

"Oh, hey there."

Keine took a step back, still a little dazed.

"Uh...you alright there?"

She didn't understand why her voice was cutting out, she had done this before so why...

Mokou pointed her thumb over her shoulder, "I'm headed to get something from Kaguya, but I should be back tonight, so if you want to wait at my place, that's O.K.."

Keine nodded.

Mokou rubbed her hair, "Why are you acting like a reticent schoolgirl?"

Keine covered her cheeks with her hands, "I don't know, I guess I feel out of it."

Mokou chuckled, "Had some sort of weird conversation that threw you off?"

Keine thought back to Youmu, which seemed to be just moments ago, "Yeah, I met Youmu just a little earlier."

"Youmu? The Zen master sword-wielding one?"

"She seemed out of it."

"Huh," Mokou pulled out a cigarette, "Ain't that something then."

She started off again to walk down the path to Eientei.

"Mokou!"

Mokou turned around, looking over to Keine down the path.

"Just...come back safe..."

Mokou rolled her eyes, put the cigarette in her mouth, turned around, and started walking off again, waving her arm in the air above her head to Keine.

After lighting the cigarette, Mokou mumbled to herself as she fanned off the match, "Tranquility, thou ne'er wilt leave my riper age..."

She let out a puff of smoke, letting it descend in to the now night sky. Somehow it seemed to stick with her, despite her moving forward. She forgot completely about the urge the cigarette was satisfying, much like someone forgot the taste of the food they ate when they began to eat mindlessly. Instead, she just played with the smoke, staring up as she walked the path, letting it crawl into the growing starlit sky. And yet, the moment could have been meditative: a calm walk in the woods. Rather, she felt consistently agitated, like a panda with a mean face, or sandals with the pressure points drawn on them. They were all things that were perfect and yet marred by a solitary instance. She felt the same right now, only for no apparent reason. She had an agitation from the vacuum. An itch she couldn't scratch.

_Keine? Could I feel this way about her?_

She shook her head, _No, I felt off the whole day, not since I saw her a moment ago._

She sighed, _Ugh, we can do what we will but we cannot will what we will._

Mokou let the cigarette hang loosely at her side, _That's what it is, I hate this feeling of determinacy that I've had recently. This whole week has been nothing but cravings screaming to be satisfied, and yet at the end of every day I sit feeling like I have done nothing for myself. I've been a slave with no one to call the slavedriver._

She sighed, _In the end, one of the greatest of life's consolations is simply having someone to blame._

She grimaced, mumbling out loud, "What a terrible thought."

After taking another drag, she saw Eientei in the distance. Only the gate was visible as the rest of the walls crowded themselves in amongst the forest. Really, for being a palace of a princess, it was a very boring, ordinary thing to look at. It didn't really add to the scenery of Mokou's walk. If anything, it added to its dread, as the size of the gate made it appear closer than it was, almost as if it were trying to tease you and test your patience as you made such a long, slow, arduous walk to the front ga-

_Oh, that's right, I can fly._

Mokou bolted forward and within a moment was in front of the gate. She looked to the left and right along the gate wall.

"Got impatient today?"

Eiren was standing next to the wall, hands in her lab coat pockets.

Mokou walked over, propping herself against the wall beside her as she finished off her cigarette, "I got impatient altogether, more like it."

With the same expressionless face, Eiren replied, "Really, you don't have someone waiting for you back home?"

Mokou replied, "Not rea-," she remembered Keine, "Well, Keine, but that's not really what's the issue."

"It sounds like she's more patient than you, then."

Mokou took another slow drag on the cigarette, "I don't know if patient is it, more like, she's awfully...clingy."

"She's getting on your nerves?"

Mokou shook her head, "No, it's myself getting on my nerves. In more ways than one. A slave of my passions. I get caught up with my temper, I act out. I need a cigarette, I pull out a cigarette. I start to feel guilty, and, well, you know. But moreover, when I can see that she feels that way, and I don't...I don't know, I start to feel guilty I guess."

Eiren walked around Mokou, leaning against the wall on the other side of Mokou, and stared up to the sky, "I remember when I was young our dog died, and I didn't feel anything. After he was buried I went right back in to the house and kept doing what I was doing before. My father, however, was devastated, and he got upset at me for not crying, and started to beat me."

Mokou looked over at Eiren.

"I eventually did start to cry, but it was out of fear for what my father would do to me. It was then that he left me alone," Eiren glanced at Mokou before continuing, "I think Keine loves you more than that."

Mokou stared at Eiren, letting her story sink in.

"Eiren."

"Yeah?"

"You have a kind of messed up childhood."

"You're one to talk."

Mokou looked out to the stars, pulling out another drag on her cigarette, "Yeah."

"Well, you want my advice to deal with your emotions?"

Mokou gave Eiren a sideways glance, "Let's hear it."

Eiren rolled her head, "Be a nihilistic bastard."

Mokou frowned.

"Because the fastest way to deal with anything is to dissociate, dissociate, dissociate."

"Eiren?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you have to be so depressing and edgy?"

She rolled her head back against the wall, "Yeah, I know."

She reached in to her pocket, "In any case, you probably want these."

She handed Mokou a pack of cigarettes.

"Thanks."

"You're probably the only patient I know of that I don't mind giving those to."

Mokou waved a finger, "They're medicine for me!"

Eiren shook her head, "What is?"

Upon that answer, Mokou gave another stare to Eiren, "You know, with that kind of answer...I think I'd rather be a slave to my emotions. At the end of the day," she jabbed her chest, "I'll still feel like I'm here."

Mokou pushed herself off, walking back down the path, leaving Eiren leaning against the palace walls.

Reisen opened the gate to let Eiren in, whispering, "She seemed awfully grouchy today."

Eiren shrugged, "It's what happens when you deny a smoker their pack."

Reisen looked back at Mokou in the distance before turning back to Eiren, and she couldn't help but stare. Eiren had a very apathetic, empty look on her face as she stared off in to the forest. It made her want to call out to her. Help her maybe? Something like that.

She hesitated for a moment, "Uh...uhmmm...are you...coming in?"

"Nah, and tell Kaguya I'll be a while."

She didn't want to leave it at that. She felt like Eiren wanted to talk more. _She_ wanted to talk more. Something felt off about her master's composure and...it worried Reisen. But, she nodded, closed the gate, and went back inside. Going immediately to Lady Kaguya's room. When she got there, the door was open, revealing Kaguya and Tewi sitting on a table next to the open door playing some manner of card game.

Tewi looked over her shoulder, "Oi! Reisen! Come to lose some money?"

Tewi gave the sly grin of an accomplished poker shark.

"No."

"Awww, come on, I'm sure you'll-," Reisen ignored her, letting her ramble on as she bowed to Kaguya before sitting down next to the two.

"Eiren will be out for a moment."

Kaguya shrugged while looking at her cards, "Alright then."

There was an awkward silence as Tewi and Kaguya continued their play whilst Reisen squirmed about.

"Master seemed..."

Kaguya gave a glancing eye to Reisen.

"...Off..."

Kaguya took a deep breath, "Yup. That'll happen."

"Is that...should we?"

Kaguya shook her head, "Deep down, despite our torments, you're pretty soft, Reisen."

She paused at the unexpected praise.

Kaguya placed down a card, causing Tewi to begin fervently studying again, "But the more you come to know Eiren, the more you recognize that she has a lot of inner demons," she shrugged, "Well, not just her, but I guess a lot of us do."

"What is going on with her, you think?"

"Sometimes, Reisen, for some people, life is a like a big container. And you pour a little more in it every day, but after a certain point, it just overflows. It overflows every single day. And that's your life."

Reisen just stared at the princess, trying to decipher the metaphor.

"Aw man!"

Tewi shoved her hand into Reisen's hands, "Here! You take over, I'm out!"

Kaguya grinned, "You out Tewi?"

Tewi waved her hand as she marched off, "I'm just going to the river, I'll be back."

The moment she stepped around the corner she was lambasted by her copious acquaintances. From there, as it usually was in her life, the conversations became a blur.

"Hahaha, yeah, I'll be there."

"No no, I'll get the money for you, no problem."

"Remember the other person at the party? Ask her!"

And, like magic, the moment her foot stepped outside the palatial grounds, there was silence again. Tewi's pseudo-courtiers had vanished. She took a deep breath as she rubbed behind her ears. She walked towards the river just outside the clearing of the bamboo forest, and sat on the had rocks by the river's edge.

A voice came from the river, "Leading a hectic life as usual, eh?"

Tewi grinned, "Came to make a deal?"

"You don't even know who I am yet."

"I can't see you and we're by a river, that means you're a kappa, which is all I need to know."

From the river popped out Nitori the kappa, "Well, you got part of that right."

Tewi began brushing off her palms, "Well, let's hear it, new cloaking technology?"

Nitori rolled her eyes, "I don't want to get shafted again, Tewi."

"What are you talking about? You agreed to that trade last time!"

Nitori rolled her eyes, "For being a slacker, you sure do put a lot of work into it."

Tewi shrugged, "What can I say, it's an art. Anyways," she tried changing the subject, "What are you doing over here?"

Nitori shrugged in response, kicking herself into a back float position, "Floating down a river."

"And you call me the slacker."

"I'm only a part-time slacker."

Tewi snorted.

Nitori stopped treading water and let herself drift along, "Well, good luck figuring out how to keep bouncing checks."

Tewi waved, her voice growing ever softer in the distance, "Yeah, yeah."

Nitori stared up at the night sky above her as she drifted along. The foliage moving against the stationary backdrop of the stars. And her mind doing much the same.

In actuality, she really wasn't a hard worker. Well, in the mean she was, but the deviations of her output were very great. In fact, she felt like she had no process or design. She worked when she felt like it, she worked when the inspiration or motivation or call-it-what-you-will struck her. And, she hated it. She felt bipolar, like one month she would do something amazing and the next year should would be in a rut, and she couldn't control it. It just happened.

Well, she tried to control it. Stick to a schedule and what-not, but it just made things worse in her experience.

And that was why she was floating down a river inside of working with the other kappas tonight.

_I hate it._

She shook her head, _I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!_

_This feeling of desiring without desire, what the hell is this?!_

She screamed out stretching her arms up, "Just do something!"

She let them down again, whispering, "Anything, really..."

She sighed, the current spinning her around. Then, she let out her breath, letting herself float down underneath the water, looking up in to the sky.

She recited to herself,

_I went down to the river,_  
_I set down on the bank._  
_I tried to think but couldn't,_  
_So I jumped in and sank._

She ruffled her hair, "Agh, dammit muse, come back!"

_It wouldn't be so painful if I at least knew what to do in the meantime._

She offered a suggestive hand to the sky, _Make an offering?_

She shook her head, _Ugh, what have I even been thinking about?_

Nitori got up, walked out of the river, and laid down on a bed of rocks next to the river.

She grunted, _Funny, it's colder 'outside' the river._

She could hear someone make a clicking sound with their mouth.

"Got the star sickness huh?"

Nitori craned her head back, seeing Marisa behind her, "I'm not a follower of the !Kung faith."

"Aw, don't say that, or else I'll have to trick you like my previous customer."

She grinned, walking over to the river's edge to crouch next to Nitori, "So, what are you doing here at night?"

"Considering starting a pagan shrine for muses."

Silence.

"Sometimes, Nitori, you're weird enough to take my breath away."

Marisa started pulling at her, "Come on, get up!"

"What, wh-"

"Because you're awesome when you're in your funks!"

Nitori froze and spun around, "What do you mean?"

"Come on, let's g-"

Nitori's voice and face went sullen and quite serious, "What do you mean?"

Marisa froze, and replied, "Zeee, sorry-"

Nitori waved a hand, "No, I'm not angry, just, really, say what you mean by that."

Nitori hung on her words as if it would crack her creative rut.

"Well," Marisa scratched her head, it really was quite embarrassing saying stuff like this, "When you're working on something you just get in a sort of mood. Not exactly arrogant, but more like unresponsive to the world. Like you aren't even there. Like you're an automaton, or, more accurately, a puppet. And I'll come by, and you'll respond just like before, but I can see in your eyes that you aren't there. You're somewhere else. The person I would talk to is just an empty shell. A philosophical zombie of a Nitori that I knew. But when you come crashing down, it's all too human. All too lovable. You're depressed, and you're wiry and you can't figure out what to do with yourself, but it's because of that that you pick up on everything. The slightest favors become the greatest gifts. You're really easy to please, and moreover, it's as if you've come from some sort of spiritual journey, and you talk about how it was like. Usually in longing ways waxing of nostalgia, but all the same..."

Marisa covered her face, "Ugh, come on Nitori, that's embarrassing to say!"

When she noticed that Nitori's response was silence, Marisa looked over to her, only to see a crying Nitori.

From behind, Nitori felt a small embrace.

She looked up, noticing it was Alice, who didn't mind Nitori's wet stature. And she did it wordlessly, and with a cool look on her face.

Nitori cleared her throat, "You're lucky you have her, you know?"

Alice released Nitori, "I know, come on."

She floated in to the air again and extended her hand as Marisa took her broom to the skies as well.

"We're going to Reimu's."

Nitori wiped her face, accepting it without thinking, "O.k.."

Like a child, Nitori took Alice's hand as they flew off in to the sky.

"How did you see me, anyways?"

"Marisa was the one who saw you."

Nitori looked over at Marisa, who replied, "Yeah, I finally got night vision potions to work."

Nitori let go of Alice's hand as she flew on her own, "Haven't you been trying to get them to work for a while?"

"Yeah, but it turns out Youmu is a genius when she's hopped up on shrooms."

Nitori blinked, "That disciplined gardener?"

Alice interrupted, "Marisa tricked her into taking them."

She pounded a fist on her broom, "It was an accident!"

"Besides," she paused, "She looked like she needed them."

Alice and Nitori shot Marisa a glance.

Marisa held up a palm, "Hear me out, it's just..."

She gestured a hand into the air, "Imagine if instead of that endless winter we had it was instead an endless autumn. Every day, fewer leaves. Every day, a grayer sky. Every day, just a little bit more monochrome. Eventually, at some point, something has to break. It doesn't matter what, but you have to change something. You have to break the patterns that are catching on each other in your mind. And if that's what it takes, then fine. At least it's better than slowly dying."

Alice replied, "I'm sure there are better ways."

"Maybe."

"Marisa, have you," Nitori looked at Marisa as she realized she already knew the answer to the question she was about to ask.

Fortunately, Marisa answered it for her, "I have."

Alice backed off from her stand-offish attitude from earlier, "How were they like?"

"I had two trips," she held up her index finger, "The first was amazing. Like I had some mild form of synesthesia that caused me to experience colors as sounds and," her hands were tracing over the sky, "And black became purple, and I just completely lost this sense of where I was."

She held up two fingers now, "But the second was terrible. Bad trip. That's all I'm going to say."

Alice looked over at Nitori, "Marisa has a lot of drug tales."

Nitori laughed, "Which one was the worst?"

Marisa didn't hesitate, ignoring the joking nature that Nitori was asking, "Heroin," she clenched both of her fists in front of her, "All it did was give me this tremendous amount of energy that I wanted to use to get more heroin."

Her answer turned into one of those awkward silences. A topic was broached that no one really wanted to admit even existed. However, this was fortunately not too long.

Marisa came in to land at the Hakurei Shrine using the entrance pavement as a runway, "We're here!"

The other two landed by the door normally.

Reimu popped her head out, "What do you all want?"

Marisa raised both hands in the air, "Booze!"

Alice sighed, but did not say anything because that was truth. Reimu in turn, rolled her eyes.

"I'll be out in a moment with some bowls, Suika is around back."

Nitori facepalmed, whispering under her breath, "Oh, right."

Marisa and Alice nodded to each other, each hooking an arm of Nitori.

Nitori moaned, "Don't bring a kappa near an oni."

Marisa shook her head.

"Come on."

Alice leaned in to Nitori's ear, "Actually, we heard Suika is kind of down."

"What? What does she have to be down about?"

Marisa shrugged, "I don't know, why are you out of inspiration?"

Alice hissed, "Marisa!"

Nitori lowered her head, "No, I see her point."

After a slight reminiscing pause, she sighed, "Fine."

She broke loose of the two and walked around to see Suika, still staring at the side of a mountain.

She looked at Suika, then back to the mountain, and then back to Suika again.

All of it clicked in her head.

She didn't know what it was that clicked. Why it seemed to make sense. But she felt for that almost meaningless amount of time that she truly and deeply empathized with how Suika really felt. Without having said a word or asked a thing of her. All past transgressions wafted away in an instant as she sat down beside Suika.

Without looking over to Nitori, Suika motioned the gourd to the mountain.

"It has been a day of meandering daydreams."


End file.
